Antje Junghanß explores how three Latin texts (Cicero's De officiis, Seneca's De beneficiis, Lactantius’ Diuinae institutiones) configure the significance which benefactions that humans bestow upon each other have for communal life. Preliminary considerations concern terminology; Stoic ethics; Roman patronage; and theories of the gift. In her survey of relevant terms, J. brings out well the conceptual variation within this discursive field. Sen. Ben. 3.18.1 serves to distinguish a voluntary beneficium to a specific individual or group from contractual obligations (credita), duties arising from kinship (officia) or required service (ministeria). Cicero, in turn, makes beneficium a subcategory of officium and uses a range of near synonyms, such as beneficentia, liberalitas, benignitas, beneuolentia, largitio, prodigalitas. And Lactantius redefines this terminological legacy in a Christian key while also valorising further concepts such as aequalitas or misericordia. J.'s Stoa comes across as a fairly uniform school of thought, without significant historical variations, though she is good at identifying important controversies in the scholarly literature. In her account of Roman patronage, she builds on Saller, Lavan and Jehne to survey the instrumental nature of Roman ‘friendship’ and the wide range of inequalities this term comprised (however euphemistically obfuscated). Finally, J. proposes to understand relationships grounded in beneficia in terms of Mauss's theory of gift exchange, emphasising both the (material) contents of the gift and the act of giving as an act of communication. She stresses that the reciprocities inherent in such exchanges strengthen ‘community’ — without subjecting this central notion to much critical pressure. And while the Maussian framework captures important aspects of Roman practice, her three texts variously maintain that the dyadic reciprocities of concern to Mauss do not necessarily result in a desirable community.

For Cicero, J. works out the complementary status of iustitia and beneficentia as constituting the society-enabling second aspect of the honestum — as background to a discussion of beneficentia, a topic treated at various moments in Off. Cicero's preoccupation with the misuse of resources tends to get downplayed. J.'s discussion of Off. 1.48 at 59–60 is a case in point: she underscores that a uir bonus must return favours received, but fails to cite Cicero's important rider modo id facere possit sine iniuria. Yet the suppressed climax of the sentence contains a radical thought, once placed within the civic ethics of Off. For instance, it liberates recipients of favours from a tyrant like Caesar from the need to reciprocate. Far from endorsing the principle of reciprocity as absolute, Cicero imposes restrictions on the circularity of favour and counter-favour. J.'s claim that Cicero is not particularly interested in the ethics of returning favours (57, 63) is therefore also misconceived — not least in the light of her own discussion of those passages where Cicero argues that no-one is ever able to repay the debt we owe to our patria and our parents: every citizen, however powerful a patron he might be in his own right, is first and foremost a beneficiary in debt, obliged to return services already received, rather than a benefactor. Simplifying, one could argue that one of Cicero's main objectives in Off. is to integrate Rome's ‘Maussian realities’ within a communal framework that relies upon, but also operates above and beyond bilateral gift exchange.

For Seneca, in turn, the value of the beneficium resides in the inner attitude of the giver — and it benefits only insofar as it is an expression of their uirtus. The discussion here struggles to go much beyond a summary of the text and has little to add to the existing scholarship, notably Miriam Griffin's magisterial Seneca on Society: A Guide to De Beneficiis (2013). But the discrepancy between the Maussian model and how Seneca thinks about benefactions and communal life emerges loud and clear.

Lactantius, finally, assumes that all of humanity desires a just society, but only Christians have the necessary insight grounded in faith to practice the virtues (such as liberal giving in line with the will of God and his care for all) to bring it about. For him, however, the motivation for benefactions is ultimately selfish: such acts are investments in an economy of salvation, with the benefactor banking on God and counting on proper dividends after death (224). Intriguing paradoxes ensue: for Lactantius’ religiously motivated homo oeconomicus, for instance, nothing is less welcome than Maussian mechanisms of reciprocity in the here and now. For insofar as beneficiaries manage to balance the account, their benefactors lose eschatological credit with God. The severely disadvantaged such as the poor, orphans or widows, who have no hope of repaying kindnesses received, therefore offer particularly promising investment opportunities.

J.'s juxtaposition of Cicero, Seneca and Lactantius thus brings out well how all three authors rethink exchange relations in ways that defy Mauss's logic of the gift. Cicero's civic ethics, Seneca's virtue ethics and Lactantius’ religious economy all envision an ideal of (communal) existence that recognises and accommodates, but also operates above and beyond the reciprocities that shape interactions between humans. The finding that some of the most interesting aspects of these texts fall outside or even operate against the theoretical framework invoked at the outset would have benefitted from further reflection.